A number of ways of organizing computer-accessible information have developed, such as relational or hierarchical database management systems, flat file data systems, spreadsheet systems, and the like. These systems are used for storing, manipulating and displaying a myriad of types of information, including accounting or other financial information, scientific or technical data, corporate or business data, name, address and telephone data and statistical data. Many formats and data structures have been developed, and this situation has both desirable and undesirable ramifications. On the positive side, by having a multiplicity of different types of systems, it is possible to provide different systems which are optimized for different purposes (e.g., optimized for data entry or storage vs. speed or flexibility of data analysis and reporting, optimized for accounting data vs. company data, and the like), or which provide user interfaces or other characteristics which may appeal to personal or company preferences. This multiplication of information systems, however, provides a substantial barrier in situations in which it would be useful to have access to information in two or more such systems, e.g. to coordinate or combine such information. Examples of such situations include: (1) an accountant who wishes to produce standardized reports but who has multiple clients, each of whom keeps its accounting data in a different type of data source; (2) a corporation with several divisions which wishes to produce uniform reports, but in which different divisions use different corporate or financial software; (3) a corporation which wishes to produce uniform reports, but which keeps its accounting information on a first type or brand of database (or other data source), and its corporation information on a second and different type of database; (4) a group of scientists investigating a common problem, each of whom stores or has access to data kept in a different type or brand of database or other data source. Other examples will occur to the reader after understanding the present disclosure. Additionally in some situations, when all the desired information in a single type of data source or even all stored in a single data file, it may be desirable to provide a manner of accessing the data, e.g., to provide for uniform and/or enhanced reporting and analysis of the data.
Such situations present difficulties for a number of reasons, including the difference in manners of organizing information and differences between types of data sources. In some situations, similar categories of information may be organized in different ways, even if the same database software is being used. For example, in a first instance, using a first database software package, a user might organize a company's personnel records such that all of the company's personnel names are stored in a first table or list, all of the addresses are stored in a second table or list, and all of the telephone numbers are stored in a third table or list, and pointers or links are stored to indicate which names are associated with which addresses and which phone numbers. However, another instance using the same software might occur in which a different person organizing personnel information might provide a single table in which each line or "record" of information includes a name, an address and a telephone number, thus without any links or pointers from a record in one table to a record to another table.
Additionally, different types of data sources may have different structures and/or different data storage formats or schemes. For example, some database packages are organized in a hierarchical manner (e.g., in a tree-fashion), while others may be organized as relational databases (modeled on two-dimensional tables of rows and columns). Furthermore, information may be stored in forms that are not, strictly speaking, database forms such as storing data in a "flat file" form, as a spreadsheet, and the like. Additionally, different types of data sources may store the data in various formats. For example, some database products store each table, each reporting format and each query as a separate file on a storage device such as a hard disk, while other software may store all tables, relationships, queries, report formats, etc., in a single file. Some products may store each record and/or field as fixed length data and/or at a fixed position in a file, while others may use delimiters to distinguish between one record and the next or between one field and the next within a record. Even if two different software products store a particular type of information at a predetermined location, such location may be different for the different software products. Furthermore, data may be encoded differently in different software products, such as using ASCII encoding in one product and multi-lingual (multi-byte) characters in another product. In some cases, data may be compressed and/or encrypted.
In view of the wide variation among types of data, in the past, when it was desired to access stored information (e.g. to standardize reports and analysis and/or to combine or coordinate information from two or more databases), a consultant or other expert individually or "manually" analyzed each "source" data file or database to understand its structure, relationship data storage format, the organization of the data within the database, and the like. The expert would then construct some manner of import or querying of the data in the source data file or database in order to achieve the desired access, coordination or combination. Although this approach is operable, it is labor-intensive, since it requires human analysis, and is also time-consumptive since a relatively long period of time is typically required for the expert or consultant to complete the task of analyzing, often requiring days or weeks for the access, coordination or combination to be achieved.
Accordingly, it would be useful to provide a system in which information in various formats or forms or organized in various ways can be accessed combined and/or coordinated, while reducing or eliminating the need for human analysis, thus providing a system which is at least partially automated and preferably less labor-intensive and less time-consumptive than certain previous methods.